To me, blue light is a sound. It's what's soft in the night when I can barely see. I don't know how I used to think what I used to think outside it.

Beyond my desk the white drabs of snow flutter under blue white street light.

480-490 nm. 3x10^10 / 480x10^-9 = 1440x10^19 = 6.25x10^16 = 62,500,000 gigahertz, the frequency of blue.

It's about hole mobility, the lasers. Didn't know nothing could move, but it does and I think of you. Nothing moves in silicon. It carries a positive charge, so nothing is a positive ion meaning positive electricity from one place to another.

Professor Chen knows his lasers, solid state. That's between me and this degree and a house with a dog and some kids. You said, "I prefer picket over chain link."

Electron clouds in the oxygen molecules in the air absorb then reemit photons. There's a slight phase shift, slowing the speed of light, higher index of refraction. We see the scattered blue. Violet is scattered more, but our eyes aren't sensitive to that light. Perhaps the sky is purple. If a kid asked me about the sky I'd tell him about the scattering.

I'd tell him blue photons comprise about 2.6eV. It takes .511MeV to make an electron-positron pair. That's something from nothing.

Dreaming of Mercy. In my arms again.

The resonance at .511Mev is the sound of matter created.

Why does this happen? You and me? We're moving around, place to place, vectorless, brownian, and then there you are, looking at me and there's my whole life in your eyes. Like suddenly there's more and I'm breathing it and I don't want it to stop.

Wait--the two components of a LASER are a tuned cavity and an optical pump. Light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation, is what LASER means.

The pump elevates the electron state of the substrate. When the one electron spontaneously drops out of orbit, it gives up energy in a photon, which stimulates the other electrons in the pumped substrate. They fall out of orbit, emitting photons. They do it like Einstein thought and when they have been stimulated to lower orbits, the photons they emit are in direction and phase with stimulating photon. This cascading effect is amplified by the tuned cavity. Typically, the ends of the cavity are reflective. The photons bounce back and forth, stimulating more photonic emission. The mirror on one end of the cavity is less reflective than the other, so the beam escapes into the real world.

Into the real world. Coherent. Light straight. Channing wants to know where I hid the last beers. I think I was rude to him, kicking out his wasp-ass stuffed nose Rhode Island lilt that pisses me off when I'm trying to study.

I'm trying to think. Goddamn, I need at least a -B-.

Dreaming of Mercy Street. I can't stop thinking I only see you when the photons stop.

A beam of light follows the geodesic, the straightest line in a space. Nothing is straighter than a beam of light. I can't stop thinking.

Blue laser diodes are typically constructed on Gallium-Nitride substrates. That's how Chen does it. I can't stop thinking of you.

A gravitational field distorts the geodesic of a space. Curves. This is why we stick to the earth. Our bodies are trying to follow the geodesic to the center of the planet, but the Earth's surface stops us.

On the geodesic. We. I saw you that one time and I felt all the music in the world that makes me think of New York at night. The city ablaze in incandescent stars, shimmering in raindrops, the hiss of tires against rippled black pavement, headlights reflecting in pothole pools. All the while couples in formal black sit at lacquered Mediterannian tables parting breaded artichoke leaves, sipping colorless martinis from stemmed triangular crystal.

What will I be?

And there you are. Above the rain, behind the clouds it's always blue. Behind your eyes it's always blue. I'm always saying goodbye, aren't I? Over and over and over and over. Weekend after weekend and in the middle the differential equations, Laplace, Hamilton, Hilbert spaces and dielectric constants. Non-linear distortions corrupt pure signals and when can I tell you how I think what I think? Why don't I know why I feel what I feel?

It was hard enough before I met you. And now I'm off the blue end of the spectrum.

You keep me from my train at Port Authority. The tone, the doors are closing and will you tell me what I'm trying to say is what's stuck in my throat. I'm missing the thoughts you kiss out of me, that warmth that seeps into my legs softens my eyes.

Sky blue.

I'm so tired of all this travelling. I just want to be done. If I could finish this I would. I told you I would.

The ice scatters the blue.

I miss you. I'm afraid of what I'm going to become if I don't do this right, and I don't know what right is.

Channing wants to know how long I'm going to be.

How long am I going to pretend I'm working? How long am I going to replay you saying it's too serious too fast? Too fast too fast. That's like fast squared and I know 3 X 10^10 meters per second is pretty much it, fast-wise, and I'm slower than that because I can see the time going by in molassas drabs, me sitting here whimpering.

I should get on the train, the blue one to Penn Station, back to you.

I know you're not like other girls. I'm not like anyone, either. You gotta care about me. I love you so you just do.

Channing wants to know where I'm going and so do I when the door slams. My brain is louder than my footfalls in the quiet snowy night. New Brunswick at midnight. Winter blue Rutgers. Trying to add my life to yours. Multiply you by me. Integrate us over time so we only have to talk in single-syllable sighs that add up to the meaning we feel.

Please be there. Please don't say no.

I know all this science and none of it makes it hurt any less. To hell with this test. The hell with all of this so-called education and the future I can't stop from coming. You'll see.

Twenty years from now you'll never believe you said that. Twenty years from now the fence will need painting and it won't matter I if I know how fast phosphorus diffuses into 111 crystalline silicon, but that you like two olives, we look good in black, and the blue from the diamond on your hand is as old and real as the sun.










For my wife, twenty years hence.
The fence needs painting.
And the dielectric constant of silicon dioxide is 12.
And light is still bending around the sun, like they said it would.

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